NS&BR: My Laptop Battery Died

[mrssavy42112]

The same thing happened to me with my old Dell laptop last year. My computer savvy husband (savvy as in he built his own computer a few months ago…) said you always need to have the battery there for a backup & that it’s unsafe to go too long without it. I’m sure he explained why…but I zoned out. I bought my replacement on Amazon. I don’t know if you have a Microcenter around you, but they have decently priced electronics. If you don’t plan on keeping it for too long, you can even get a refurbished battery for cheaper.

Just make sure to backup all of your files on an external hard drive. I didn’t do that & lost 20pgs of my final paper a few years ago. I needed that stupid thing to graduate & almost pulled all of my hair out…really.

[ssmjlm]

I would look into a refurb battery, like on amazon.

I'm pretty disappointed in HP, DH's less than 2 year old laptop has had so many issues, the last one being I had to buy him a new power cord from amazon.

If his goes, I'm getting him an ipad, he doesn't really need a laptop.

[bimbi284]

H and I are fans of TigerDirect for all of our computer needs. Not sure if they have replacement batteries, but I know they carry HP cuz I bought mine from them, haha.

[Deleted]

I just bought a new battery for my HP laptop. It's only 2 1/2 yrs old. The charging life for those batteries also sucks.

I bought a refurbished battery from bestbuy.com. But only because I was purchasing some other items. Amazon is cheaper for refurbs.

[bimbi284]

Jun 21, 2012 11:01:59 GMT -5 @mavjen said:

ssm jlm, HP's are total crap. I have this one because my last HP laptop crashed beyond repair within 12 months of buying it. The current one is a replacement laptop (1 year warranty). I'm surprised it's lasted this long.

I have heard really good things about Toshiba laptops. I'm interested in a Mac laptop but not sure if I can access my Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and photos that were all saved on my PC laptop.

I had a Toshiba before this HP and it was a serious piece of shit. My father also had a Toshiba and had a lot of problems. We haven't had too many problems with our HPs though. H's has some battery life problems, but his is older than mine.

[mrst2]

Jun 21, 2012 11:16:00 GMT -5 @mavjen said:

Oh, very good to know, Bimbi. Thank you for the heads up about Toshiba!

Okay, now I'm left with an Apple Mac laptop as an option. But only if I can access and use my saved stuff on my hard drive.

Any other recommendations for a laptop? I won't lie, I am a teensy bit excited about getting a new laptop when this one bites it. I can get a smaller 13" laptop and finally justify the OG bag purchase. LOLOLOLOL

I had a crap Toshiba laptop before my Macbook too. It was such a piece of junk.

You can buy MS Office for Mac or you should be able to convert your files and use them on openoffice (a free word/excel type program).
www.microsoft.com/mac/products

Here's the Cnet page on OpenOffice
download.cnet.com/OpenOffice-org/3000-18483_4-10263109.html

[mrst2]

It took me a little while to get used to it, but I love it now. I've had mine since Oct 2010.

[mrssavy42112]

Jun 21, 2012 11:01:59 GMT -5 @mavjen said:

ssm jlm, HP's are total crap. I have this one because my last HP laptop crashed beyond repair within 12 months of buying it. The current one is a replacement laptop (1 year warranty). I'm surprised it's lasted this long.

I have heard really good things about Toshiba laptops. I'm interested in a Mac laptop but not sure if I can access my Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and photos that were all saved on my PC laptop.

You can get MS Office for Mac too, or you can get a Windows converter thing for Mac and view everything like that.

[ssmjlm]

Yeah I'm thinking macbook next. DH isn't a fan of apple for some reason (I have yet to figure out why) but I told him tough cookies.

[mrst2]

Jun 21, 2012 11:27:22 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

Yeah I'm thinking macbook next. DH isn't a fan of apple for some reason (I have yet to figure out why) but I told him tough cookies.

My husband isn't either. He recently got a tablet and wouldn't even consider the Ipad.

[bimbi284]

Jun 21, 2012 11:33:59 GMT -5 @mavjen said:

Sorry, one last question, mrst2. Can you open Word/Excel/PowerPoint attachments on your Macbook from people who send stuff from their PC/Microsoft docs?

From my understanding you can...you may need conversion software, but that's usually free

[mrst2]

Yep. I just did it to be sure (I had an old excel doc someone sent me in my email) and the excel doc I downloaded opened automatically with OpenOffice.

[Deleted]

Jun 21, 2012 11:33:59 GMT -5 @mavjen said:

Sorry, one last question, mrst2. Can you open Word/Excel/PowerPoint attachments on your Macbook from people who send stuff from their PC/Microsoft docs?

You can. If you install the open office software that was posted above you shouldn't have a problem.

[karebear304]

We're in the same boat (HP laptop and all). We have to leave the computer plugged in all the time and the other day the power supply died too.

Two generic amazon replacements came/failed/returned later we bought the real thing and H is getting a new battery for the laptop this week. We'll definitely get the actual HP one based on the power supply debacle.

It's not worth it to us to get a new laptop just yet (we aren't really big computer people) so the battery should hold us over.

[karebear304]

Oh, and as for the Mac to PC stuff - we are about half and half in the office and all our Macs convert the stuff just fine. We edit/save/send back and forth all day.

The only thing we've had trouble with on the Macs is editing and editable PDF that was created in Acrobat Pro (the full version, not just the reader). I'm thinking we just need to buy Pro for the Macs too, but as for the MS Office products they've all been totally fine.